Calcutta, June 16: The State Bank of India has set up a Rs 200-crore fund to support start-ups in financial technology.

SBI's "IT Innovation Start-Up Fund" comes at a time the Centre is trying to develop a start-up ecosystem. With digital technology making greater inroads into banking, a number of financial institutions are looking to promote start-ups.

"This fund shall consider assistance of up to Rs 3 crore to an Indian-registered company for promoting their business innovations using information technology in India for banking and related technology," SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said at a CII event in Mumbai today, PTI reported.

A mentor team will monitor the progress and utilisation of funds besides offering legal and tax-related assistance.

Bhattacharya said the bank was looking at cross-selling through collaboration with the financial technology companies.

"It is not only the fintechs that are coming into banking, but banking can also benefit from fintech. There may be one or two areas where they can give us competition, but overall, there could be several areas where they can help cross-sell banks' products," she said.

The SBI has a branch in Bangalore called SBI InCube for start-ups. It functions as a single point of contact for start-up accountholders for their various banking and financial advisory-related requirements. Besides, the bank has separate specialised branches for corporate and small and medium enterprises.

"The mood in India, like that for the rest of the globe, has been bullish. Investment in fintech companies has touched $1.2 billion in 2015 compared with $145.1 million in the previous year. Many multinational banks are also looking to invest in early stage fintech start-ups in India and these trends are moving at a considerable pace," Pricewaterhouse Coopers said in a report released today.

The report also highlighted that banks had already started to collaborate with fintech companies with expertise in the banking, payments and remittance space.